


Graceless

by sweetheartdean



Series: SPN Kink Bingo 2019 [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Breathplay, Established Relationship, Hand Jobs, M/M, Season/Series 14, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 13:25:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17447834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetheartdean/pseuds/sweetheartdean
Summary: Dean's coughing up grace, and Dean's talking about Michael, and Sam's not sure how to deal with any of this.





	Graceless

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the SPN Kink Bingo 2019; "Choking" square.
> 
> PSA: Breathplay is a dangerous kink and can lead to potential injury and even death very quickly. The depiction in this fic is romanticized. Don't try it at home.
> 
> A huge thank you to BlindSwandive for betaing this fic and Interstitial for giving me advice. <3

Ever since they got Michael out, Dean’s been coughing up grace.

If it wasn’t so scary, it would almost look comedic, like a cat coughing up a furball. His shoulders shake and his eyebrows knit together and then he finally hacks it out, his hands covered in glowing blue strings.

The first time Sam sees it happen, he runs right over to Dean. Dean looks at him with these scared, sheepish eyes that make it obvious he’s been hiding his glow-in-the-dark ailment for a while. Sam calls in their family doctor slash guardian angel. Cas assures the two of them it’s nothing to worry about.

“Possession is a heavy burden on one’s body, especially being possessed by an archangel,” he explains patiently to Sam, as if it’s some kind of new information for him. “It’s normal for the aftershocks to differ. I’ve heard of this happening to other ex-vessels before. There could be other symptoms, like shards of the true form of the angel in the grace that’s been ejected...”

Sam’s ears zero down on the words _ex-vessel_. Something that’s been emptied and never filled quite right again. That familiar hurt of stretching one’s soul to fill the same space it used to before it had to share its room with another being. Sam’s ribcage is too spacious for the meek little thing that his soul feels like someday. 

But, anyway, Dean spitting up Michael’s grace is just fine and dandy. It’s just another Tuesday.

When Sam comes down into their bedroom that night, wrapping up the research, Dean’s already sleeping, his freckled shoulder peeking from underneath the covers. The strings of grace are smeared all over the pillows and Dean’s mouth. Sam gets the wet wipes out of the bedside table and cleans it all up, meticulous and almost distant from the task at hand. Dean mumbles something in his sleep, mouthing at Sam’s touch.

Sam takes a long, hot shower after, and rubs his skin until it’s bright. He makes sure not to look at his reflection for too long. He gets re-dressed, pulling on a soft henley after dragging his fingers over all the shirts in his wardrobe. Dean makes fun of the plaid he wears; when Sam tells him he wears plaid too, every day, he says, “Yeah, but mine isn’t butt-ugly, dude, this looks like the '60s vomited all over it.”

Dean probably just hates the color orange, but Sam likes it. Even if it’s a little ugly, so what? It’s all his. 

“You look like a top half of a convict in this,” Dean says whenever Sam pulls on his jacket. The last time he said that Sam actually laughed because that’s what you do when your brother that you just got back makes unfunny jokes. You throw him a bone because you missed him.

Sam’s routine is tightly woven, but he does his best to shake things up to keep himself on his toes. Autopilot is Sam’s worst nightmare. If he brushes his teeth and only realizes he brushed them by the time he’s spitting out the last round of toothpaste, with his memory having nothing to show for what happened in between, his day is as well as ruined. That nasty little gnawing feeling is going to rise up in his stomach and curl up in his chest and nest in his ears, saying, _What if you’re... again? What if you never stopped in the first place?_

He sits down on the edge of the bed, psyching himself up to sleep, and that’s when Dean wakes up, which is what Sam’s been worried might happen. Dean gets a little honest and a lot needy in the night sometimes, and Sam’s not quite sure if he has the mental capacity for that right now. But Dean’s his brother, and Dean’s the one who’s been through the meatgrinder most recently, so it’s up to Sam to offer him a plaid-clad shoulder to lean on. 

Sam straightens up a little.

“I was just going to sleep,” he says, soft, but it’s too late because Dean presses his mouth against Sam’s, and it tastes like ozone and sea salt, tastes like whatever a lightning would taste like, sharp and fresh and all too familiar to Sam. 

Thankfully, Dean looks away from Sam, and doesn’t see Sam wipe his mouth, sharp and jerky. He feels sick. He feels tired. He feels nothing.

“I spat out more of that crap, didn’t I?” Dean mutters, smacking his lips. He rolls his eyes and looks at the ceiling. There are no lights soaking through shades flickering on there because they’re deep underground. Among the fluorescent lights, Sam misses the shadowplay. 

It’s only night because Sam knows it to be.

Dean coughs again and wipes the glistening stains off his mouth. “Fucking hate it,” Dean says, voice wheeze-hoarse. “It’s like…” 

Sam’s own breath catches in his throat.

“It’s like I’m back there going toe-to-toe with him, y'know?” 

Yeah, Sam does, all too well. He shivers and bundles up every time the temperature outside drops. His bones ache with every winter's onset, like an old man’s. “Like he’s holding me under.” 

Lucifer is ice where Michael is water. Two different states of the same poison.

“And when I wake up, I just...” Dean rubs his forehead. “Am I really here? Or am I still tripping balls, locked inside my own melon?”

 _Shut up_ , Sam thinks helplessly. _Shut up_. His mouth is cotton-dry and his stomach squirms with a special kind of dread like he missed a step on the stairs and his foot just never found solid ground again. _God, Dean, I can’t listen to this._

But Dean needs to get this out of his system, like that grace, and he trusts Sam enough to share. Maybe he trusts only Sam enough to share. If Sam says, “Please, Dean, don’t talk about this with me, I can’t handle that," Dean will hear, “Bottle this up and don’t talk about it with anyone." Dean has issues with talking about anything heavier than what’s for dinner.

And Sam gets it. He gets what Dean’s talking about, maybe better than anyone else alive on Earth right now. Not a lot of people get to have an archangel inside them. Even less get to live to tell the tale. And Sam just can’t revisit this. He just can’t. Not when he barely even believes Lucifer is dead. He’s bought that story too many times before and assured himself, night after night, _He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone_ , just to end up face to face with him again. 

Michael sees Dean as a weapon. Lucifer sees Sam as a plaything. 

Dean keeps talking and talking. Sam must’ve zoned out. He pinches himself, discreet, and it stings, but that doesn’t prove anything, not really.

“Man. Some days, I barely keep it together.”

“I know,” Sam rushes to say when Dean grows quiet, and Dean looks up at him, all but pleading for more than just the two words that Sam’s got to give. “I know, Dean.”

Dean licks his lips and rubs the bridge of his nose. Sam knows he’s not being helpful; he can barely carry his own weight, let alone Dean’s too. Been a long time since he felt so completely useless, but how on earth is he supposed to give advice about something that makes him want to curl up in a ball and plug his ears? 

“Okay, uh, I guess I’ll just hit the hay again,” Dean says, unsure. He expected more from Sam than this, but Sam’s voice won’t come and Sam’s tongue won’t move. Sam’s vocal cords have been sliced so many times in the Cage that some days, Sam’s not sure they healed entirely right. Lucifer applied ice to all injuries, but that didn’t help. “Night, Sammy.”

“Wait,” Sam says, and he’s reaching out for Dean’s arm. “Wait.” He doesn’t have the words, but he has himself, and he climbs on top of Dean, shooting him an inviting smile. “Maybe we could distract you.”

“Hey, that’s my move,” Dean says, a little quirk in his eyebrow. Yeah. Fucking to avoid talking is Dean’s number one diversion technique, so he can see straight through it when it's being used on him. Sam’s cheeks grow hot. So does the tip of his nose. Dean nods. “Alright. Let’s distract me.”

Sam pulls off his henley and yanks Dean into a kiss, and even if he still tastes like archangel, it’s a damn good kiss. Dean throws himself into it like he always does, hands on the side of Sam’s face, kissing him for all he’s worth. Never lost it, that good old-fashioned hedonism and lust for life (and Sam). He was that eager many years ago when they started this thing, and he’s still eager now. Eyes shining, hair a bedhead mess, freckles splattered all over. 

Sam looks at him and tries to push this image of Dean pinned under him to the forefront of his brain.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Dean says, and maybe Sam should someday. Maybe he should put film into one of those old cameras the Men of Letters left behind and have Dean pose for him. Dean would laugh and make faces at the shutter and maybe even scowl a little bit when he realizes Sam’s not quitting easy, and no girl in a magazine would ever measure up to those pictures. 

They make out for a while, Sam’s half-clothed body against Dean’s mostly naked one. Sam likes being on top. It’s like he can physically shield his partner from whatever bad things might be coming their way. Dean doesn’t let him feel like the protector often, too attached to that role to ever give it up.

Sam licks his lips, nervous. Maybe he could still help Dean, even if the talking route failed miserably. His heart gets all kinds of fluttery just thinking about it, though, so Sam hurries to open his mouth before he can even begin to change his mind. 

“There’s something I thought we could try. If you wanted,” Sam says, sitting up. Dean whines at the loss of Sam’s mouth and tries to yank him back, but Sam stands his ground, because this? This is important. “Like, uh, a trust fall kind of thing.”

“A what now?” Dean’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Have you heard of exposure therapy? Like if a person is scared of dogs, they might hang out with a puppy first to get used to being around a dog. Like a fear vaccine, I guess.”

“Shrink stuff and dogs, no wonder you’d know all about this.” Dean smiles wide. His eyes scrunch up, these little laughter lines Sam loves so much digging in deep. “What are you suggesting here?”

“I’m just saying that if feeling like you’re choking takes you to a bad place,” Sam strokes Dean’s thigh as he says it, “maybe experiencing that in, um, a safer environment will help.”

“Wow. That’s a lot of big words just to say you want to see me choke, Sammy,” Dean punches his shoulder, and Sam sputters on his explanation that this whole thing isn’t entirely for his kinky gain, except that Dean’s kind of right. He does want to do it. But he also believes it could be good for Dean. “Sure, what the hell,” Dean says, letting him off the hook easy. “I’ll try anything once.”

He grins and Sam returns it, unsteady.

“C’mere,” Sam says at last, sitting up, and settles down on the edge of the bed, feet planted firmly on the floor. He yanks Dean close, in between his own spread legs, Dean’s back to his chest. Dean’s face is so close to his. This feels stupid intimate, even considering just how intimate they’ve been over the years. “Tap out if you need to, okay?” 

“Yeah, yeah. Not my first rodeo.”

“It kind of is!” Sam says. It’s weird. Negotiating things is weird. They don’t talk about their kinks--they just go for it--but Sam couldn’t really spring this one on Dean. He might not really know what the fuck he’s doing, but Dean needs something. Someone. 

Dean needs him, and he couldn’t give him anything with his words, so he’ll have to deliver like this.

“You might’ve had me in a chokehold once or twice. Not that I’d ever admit it if anyone else was around.” Dean shoots him one of those devil-may-care grins, and Sam thinks, hey, maybe doing this dangerous thing with his dumbass big brother who pushes himself past any limits is kind of stupid and risky. He’ll just have to watch Dean twice as attentively. Ha. What could possibly go wrong? 

“That’s different,” Sam mutters, but Dean’s not listening, already grinding back down on Sam, and Sam presses his hand to the root of Dean’s throat. Dean’s breath is already shallow, anticipating the push, but Sam takes his time. He thumbs across the hollow of his throat, and he hopes this keeps Dean’s mind off things—sure does for him, even if the shadow of Lucifer roams in the back of his mind for days whenever he opens that door even just a tiny creek, and Dean’s words, well, they opened the floodgates, pretty much—

Sam shoves his other hand into Dean’s boxers, grabbing his dick maybe a little too harshly, and Dean hisses just a tiny bit with a, “Dude, watch the merchandise!” tossed in Sam’s direction. Sam mumbles something apologetic right into Dean’s ear, nosing at it, and as soon as Sam relaxes his grip, Dean relaxes right back down too.

Sam gently runs his fingertips across Dean’s throat and watches his skin goosebump up. “Still want me to do it?” he breathes, and Dean nods, once, twice, and then Sam grabs his throat, fingers digging in, cutting off Dean’s air.

Dean’s hands jump up to his wrist out of pure instinct, but he doesn’t tap out, so Sam keeps squeezing with one hand and rubbing Dean where he wants to with the other. Sam grinds up against him to the rhythm of the little helpless gagging sounds Dean makes, but he’s still not tapping out—

Sam finally pulls his hand away, sharp, as if he’s been burned. Dean pulls in a deep, shuddering breath and throws his head back, on Sam’s shoulder, chest heaving with it.

“Too much?” Sam asks, fingers still working Dean’s dick over, thumb dragging over the head. He teases his bottom lip between his teeth until it stings. 

“Do it again,” Dean says, jerky, and physically makes Sam’s hand nestle in the crook of his own neck, but he’s holding him pretty loosely and Sam can stop if he doesn’t want to, and he can take his hand off Dean whenever he feels like it, and it’s a small victory every time his body listens to what he wants to do.

Sam squeezes down anyway, because Dean asked and because he can. Dean arches up in his arms, and Sam keeps pumping away, holding Dean squeeze-close. As close as you can get, really, and it’s so cliche, but they do fit together like puzzle pieces, like someone with a very fucked-up sense of humor made them slot together perfectly and waited to see what they made of it.

Under his hand, Dean fights for air. Sam squeezes harder for it. 

Dean’s dick twitches and he scrapes at Sam’s arm and Sam pulls it away just in time for him to tip over the edge, shuddering and rubbing against Sam, so damn warm and familiar.

Dean coughs, doubled over, and the glowing blue strings of grace falling from his mouth mix with the come on his stomach.

“Fuck,” he mutters, wiping his mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” Sam rushes to say, grabbing the pack of wet wipes. He hands them over, because there’s no way Dean will let him clean him up while he’s awake. “Are you okay?”

“I’m peachy, man,” Dean says, voice two octaves lower. Raspy. Goes straight to Sam’s dick. “You?”

“Never better.” 

Dean eyes him, a wary quirk to his left eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything.

Sam’s not sure if the exposure therapy helped Dean at all or not, and he isn’t going to ask because Dean won’t give him a straight answer anyway. But when he reaches out to ruffle Dean’s hair, he’s sure he’s doing it entirely of his own free will, and that has to be enough.

Sam reaches out for the switch of the bedside lamp and flicks it into the off position.

Dean is warm and solid when Sam pulls him into the bed, even warmer when he leans close and jerks Sam off under the covers, both of them quiet. Dean’s face is tucked in the crook of Sam’s neck. He smells of grace, but he smells like Dean, too, and it’s a weird mix but not entirely a turn-off. 

“You don’t like it when I talk about Michael, do you?” Dean says, a statement rather a question. It’s so damn straightforward, Sam can barely process it for a second there. 

It’s not that Sam doesn’t like it, per se. It’s just… “I can’t,” Sam says in a voice better suited for a confessional than a dark bedroom. “I-I’m sorry.”

“I thought you wanted me to share,” Dean says. He twists his wrist just right and Sam bites back a groan.

“I do. Of course I do.”

“Just not about this. ‘Cause of Lucifer? Shit, Sam, why didn’t you tell me?” 

After a long beat of silence, Sam shrugs. He doesn’t know how to explain it, but Dean doesn’t need him to.

“Hell, I didn’t really want to talk about it in the first place. Promise,” he says, and maybe it’s a bald-faced lie, but Sam holds on to it all the same, like it could possibly be a good excuse for letting Dean down in this department.

“This, tonight— it was pretty awesome,” Dean carries on, kissing Sam’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

Dean’s hand is so warm. 

Sam shudders when he comes. 

\---

He wakes up to some more stains of grace on Dean’s pillow, inches away from his own face. The surface of the grace is moving and wiggling, and Sam makes out some small, amorphous thing in it. Must be one of those shards of true form that Cas’s been talking about.

Sam reaches out and squeezes it between his fingers like a gnat, and it pops with a quiet squelching noise. Dean’s ragged breathing grows steadier at once. 

Sam gets up and finds an orange shirt in his closet because he knows it’ll make Dean snort and have a field day making fun of him, and maybe Sam kind of wants that today. 

Besides, he likes the color orange. It’s the opposite of blue. 

Down here, in the windowless bunker, it’s morning because Sam knows it to be.


End file.
